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Welcome to My Furniture Forum, sponsored by The Keeping Room, a dealer in high quality leather and reproduction furniture.

Hancock and Moore order times

H&M makes the majority of their frames in house and generally speaking will be able to have most standard pieces complete in 6 weeks if the cover is in stock.

Once the piece is handed over to the shipper, it usually takes 3 to 6 working days (excludes Sat/Sun) via common carrier truck to arrive at a dealer's store. If coming via a home delivery service, its usually a week to get it checked in at that service and then anywhere from a few days to two weeks before it arrives at your home (depending on where you live and how much freight they need to get to run a truck to your location).

I like to check status of hides with most my orders and frequently will call at time of order. This does not mean the hides are reserved, its just what's available as of the moment of that phone call.

When the order is faxed to H&M, and keyed there, at that time your leather is reserved for your piece. It can - and does - sometimes sell out from phone check time to order key-in time. It will update on the dealer confirmation that comes in a week or so later. If the hide goes out of stock and is not at the leather supplier, it can take 2 to 6 weeks to get that leather back in to H&M.

Where we get tripped up:

Often a multiple order comes in to one person, with a sofa in one leather, a recliner in another, and perhaps an ottoman in a third cover. Everything may be in-stock when we call. Because you want to get it all at one time, in one delivery to save on freight dollars, its specified as "Ship Complete", that means nothing leaves the dock until its all ready.

The way the H&M production computer is set up, it will not print production tags until frames & covers are all ready for all three pieces, which means it will not reserve the leathers until everything is ready to go. So lets say a customer orders the sofa in Antelope Rust and the ottoman in Kipling Whiskey, and the chair in Capri Tobacco. If the Capri is out of stock, it will NOT hold the Kipling or Antelope hides in the meantime. While we are waiting for Capri to arrive, the others may be sold out to other orders. This can result in long delays in your pieces being done and requires a manual intervention to do something we call 'force the ticket', to prevent an endless loop of delays. By forcing the ticket, pieces are made that have covers in stock while waiting for the delayed cover to arrive.

Now you may ask, "Why not just make them up and hold them in the warehouse while they wait for the missing cover?" Well the answer to that is - they don't have that kind of warehouse space to let things sit and wait. H&M outputs nearly 300 pieces each workday so you can see its a busy place.

Solutions:

Take your multiple orders as they are done piece by piece, and do not option for 'ship complete'. Your freight charges will be higher on multiple deliveries, however. Sometimes much higher!

If things seem to be taking to long, ask your dealer to check status for you and see if they can 'force the ticket'. It won't make the order come any faster on the out-of-stock hide, but at least your other pieces will have reserved leather than way.

Hope that helps explain the production time some.

Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty years in the business.
My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum
I ask that you do NOT call my store with general furniture questions, that is what the forum is for